“I see,” he said quietly, his eyes misting. “I had not dared hope for it. How—but where is—”
Will held up his hand. “I’ve m-much to tell you, with D-Darby’s help.” He inclined his head, indicating his loyal butler who stood patiently to one side.
Darby bowed perfunctorily, then gestured toward the door. “If you please, sir, his lordship would receive you in the salon,” and looking at the others, added, “All of you.”
Caleb’s apprehension and curiosity were clearly evident—he looked at his father inquisitively, but abided by Will’s wishes, and motioned for Lady Sophie to join him. Will could not help noticing how she slipped her hand into his as if she had done it a thousand times before, and wondered if there was more to their relationship than he could remember.
Ah well. So many memories. With Honorine’s help, he’d eventually get to them all.
They all followed him to the red salon, filing in quietly. His physician, Dr. Breedlove, was already in the salon with Ian and his governess, Miss Hipplewhite. Thank God Darby had the foresight to send for them in light of everything that had happened the last several days. They had arrived just this morning, and thankfully, Ian never saw his father.
But when Ian saw Honorine, he abandoned his toy locomotive on the window seat where he had been playing and came flying across the room, latching himself around her waist. Honorine released a cry of joy; she picked the boy up and held him to her as she twirled around. Then she set him down, murmured soothingly in French to him, and finally handed him over to Miss Hipplewhite. “Run with you now, mon petit, and I shall come to you soon.”
Ian nodded, and watched Honorine as Miss Hipplewhite pulled him along, until he was out the door and could no longer see her.
“Let me have one more look at you, if you please,” Dr. Breedlove said authoritatively as Will carefully lowered himself into the old leather winged-back chair.
“Is he quite all right?” Caleb asked, concerned.
“I am f-fine,” Will insisted.
“He is now, sir,” the doctor said as he checked Will’s pulse. “I think we may hope for continued improvement. He is making excellent progress, in spite of everything.”
Will gruffly waved the doctor away and motioned Caleb to sit. “I am f-fine. I’ve m-many answers for you. Sit. Sit now.” Caleb reluctantly did as he was told; he took the settee near his father, seating Lady Sophie next to him, his hand possessively on her knee, his attention focused on his father. Honorine and Lord Kettering also took seats, and Fabrice and Roland, looking a bit uncomfortable, remained near the back of the room.
Will looked at the people surrounding him and offered up another prayer of thanks that he was here, alive, among friends and family. How close he had come to losing them, he did not know, because Trevor, in his deranged state, never realized how far he had gone. Whatever anyone else might think of his story, Will would not believe—would never believe—that his son had intended to kill him.
He had thought carefully how he would go about telling them what had happened, reaching for words in the deep hole of his memory, going over and over it in his rooms late at night so that he would not forget a single detail that he had recovered. When they had discovered Trevor missing this morning, he had gone over the words again with Darby so he would not forget a single word, would be able to tell them all that had happened. But as Will looked at them now, conveying all that had happened seemed overwhelming.
“Trevor has fled,” he said, earning a collective gasp of shock, and looked hopelessly at Darby. “Tell them,” he said.
Darby cleared his throat. “If I may have your attention, please,” he called out in a voice worthy of a vicar, and began to tell them the whole, extraordinary story of desperation and betrayal.
He told them just what Will had finally begun to remember on those nights he had paced his room, desperate to maintain the progress he had made under Honorine’s care. How Trevor’s horrible penchant for gambling had ruined his relationship with his wife, whom Will remained convinced had died of a broken heart. Trevor had never seemed to be able to help himself—he gambled at every turn, driven by some hidden need that Will could not fathom or explain. It was almost as if a demon had him in his grip and would not let him go—he risked everything to gamble, even his wife and child.
It had started innocently, as far as Will could remember—cards, an occasional horse race. But before long, Trevor’s stakes grew bigger. Before Will knew what was happening, he had lost all of his inheritance from his mother, Elspeth’s pension, too. When he learned of it, Will had been horrified. He had helped his son the best way he knew how—by refusing to give him money, thinking that might wake him from the grips of his madness.
Unfortunately, that did not stop his son—it sent him to a moneylender.
Piecing together his memory with Darby’s recollections and bits of gossip, Will had remembered that Trevor continued to gamble by recklessly borrowing money with increasingly higher interest to pay for his losses. Nothing he said could sway Trevor from the madness that had overtaken him. They argued frequently—Trevor accused him of being against him, of having always been against him. Will said things he now regretted. He had finally reached a point where he very much feared Trevor would gamble away Ian’s future, and therefore had been compelled to take some very drastic steps.
He started by having a trust established that would go to Ian upon his death—essentially bypassing Trevor. And then he had changed his will, leaving all his holdings to his bastard son, Caleb. The only thing that would pass to Trevor was a modest annual stipend and the title of viscount, for which the entail had long since been eaten up by other holdings and investments.
Leaving everything to Caleb was something Trevor could not forgive or forget.
Will knew now why he had done it. Having struggled to retrieve the memories, it had come back to him in the course of those long, painful nights. Slowly, he had begun to remember the bond forged with Caleb over the years. It was Caleb whom he had loved; Caleb whom he had wished had been his legitimate son. He was more like Will than Trevor, as a boy and even more so as a man—fit, athletic. Smart and industrious. Caleb had always been proud and true, in spite of the cross Will had handed him at birth. He was a kind soul; always more concerned about the welfare of others than his own. Will had, in the course of those nights, even recalled the care Caleb had given a bird with a broken wing as a young boy. His mother helped him set the wing, then Caleb had nursed it until the wing healed. The morning they let the bird fly away, Caleb had watched it making lazy, uneven circles in the sky, then had said, “I want to be like him, Papa. I want to fly.”
Caleb did fly. He excelled at all things, never letting his illegitimacy stop him.
Trevor, on the other hand, was a lazy, indolent child, a mediocre student, and lacking in all ambition. It seemed his one desire in life was to gamble.
Those were the reasons Will had made the changes to his will. He had summoned Trevor to his study to tell him of the changes. Trevor had, of course, been angry—Will could now clearly remember his terrible bitterness, how he had accused him of horrible deceptions, of loving Ian and the bastard brother he never knew more than he loved his own son.
It was, unfortunately, true.
How he regretted the turn of fate now! Guilt ate him—perhaps Trevor would have been different had he loved the sullen little boy.
Darby went on to tell the spellbound group that days after Will’s ugly encounter with Trevor, on a cold, blustery afternoon, the seizure had invaded his body like a bloody bolt of lightning from the sky. Will wished he could explain the terror—there had been no warnings, no symptoms. He had simply awoken to find himself locked in a gnarled body, capable of thought, but his memory obliterated, and lacking all the words and the ability to act.
“I prescribed the opiate,” Dr. Breedlove interjected here. “I confess, I was rather uncertain whether or not Lord Hamilton was in any pain. He was unable to communicate a
’tall. I showed Trevor how much of the drug to give him to make him comfortable. Unfortunately, Trevor increased the dosage, and kept him in something very near a perpetual state of paralysis.”
“I rather suspect that with the moneylenders threatening Ian’s life, Mr. Hamilton apparently realized instantly his dumb luck in his father’s seizure. The opiate kept his father in a state that allowed him to steal from him.”
“Steal from him?” echoed Caleb, incredulous.
Darby nodded and continued on, telling them that Trevor’s scheme was simple—Darby had even seen him put the banknote beneath his father’s hand on one occasion. As Will listened to Darby, he still held fast to his belief that Trevor had not intended to do it more than once. But it had proven too easy to do—by manipulating the dates and using various venues for the banknotes, no banking authority could readily discern what he was about. Trevor made doubly sure he was safe by gradually increasing the dosage of opiate until it greatly exceeded what the doctor had prescribed. Further, by denying visitors, no one could see just how infirm the opiate made Will.
“Why, then, did he bring Father to London?” Caleb demanded, clearly agitated.
“My personal opinion, sir, is that he grew complacent. Having abused the local banking institution, he thought the height of the Season was a good time to continue his scheme at the Bank of England, where the viscount had considerable holdings. He was moved, in part, by your attempts to see your father.”
“But he did not account for Madame Fortier,” Sophie said thoughtfully.
“Yes. Honor,” Will said, nodding vigorously.
“Madame Fortier?” Julian asked, obviously confused.
“But I have done nothing for this son!” Honorine insisted.
“Yet when you met him in Regent’s Park,” Sophie explained, “you knew that the viscount’s mind was functioning.”
“It was not only his mind,” Honorine said with a blushing smile.
“That was when she began to work with you, isn’t it, my lord? Helped you to move, to learn simple tasks again. The improvement was miraculous.”
“Yes, it was,” Will readily agreed. “I owe her m-my life. Unfortunately, Trevor s-saw the improvement, t-too.”
Darby sighed sadly. “He was quite mad,” he said simply, and told them how Trevor had arrived at Hamilton House looking very much like a madman, and worse, acting like one. He had immediately accused Honorine of kidnapping for the purpose of extorting money from the Hamilton estate. This, Darby added of his own accord, he believed Trevor had said to cover up his own thievery. Trevor had promptly locked Will away, had administered dangerous doses of the opiate, and had called for the sheriff to have Honorine taken away and charged with a host of crimes.
“What he could not predict, however, was exactly when he would have the sheriff to Hamilton House,” Darby said with not a little bit of pride. “I delayed the request, hoping to give Madame Fortier time to escape. Fortunately, I was aided in that endeavor by the arrival of Mr. Hamilton.”
“Yes, I can attest to the fact that he was quite deranged,” Caleb said, frowning. “And Father horribly incapacitated. And knowing Trevor’s influence in the parish, I had no hope the sheriff would listen to anyone but him. I feared for Madame Fortier’s safety—we fled to Kettering Hall.”
“But we also feared for Lord Hamilton,” Sophie interjected. “Miss Brillhart took our concern to the constable in Kettering.”
“And we were quite fortunate to have both the constable and the sheriff arrive just two mornings past,” Darby informed them. “Unfortunately, not before Trevor discovered his father was not drugged as he had planned, but rather well and remembering more and more each day.”
“Where is Trevor?” Caleb asked again. “How did you manage to free yourself of his captivity? The drug?”
“Honor,” Will said. “She m-made me remember the m-medicine.”
“Madame Fortier had, on the occasion of their trip to Hamilton House, already deduced that it was the medicine that was making him so senseless,” Darby added. “She told him—just before you rushed her away—to remember what he had learned, to remember the medicine. It jogged his memory, and from that point forward, he merely pretended to take the medicine, disposing of it as soon as Mr. Hamilton had left the room. Then he would force himself to stand and walk, to keep up his strength.
“It so happens that I inadvertently discovered him pacing his rooms one night. He was much more lucid than before and was able to tell me what was happening. In addition, he told me there was something about you, sir,” he said, gesturing at Caleb, “that he could not seem to remember but that he knew was important. Seeing what Mr. Hamilton was about, and truthfully, having suspected for some time that things were not quite right with him, I took it upon myself to discover where he kept the opiate. Once I discovered it, I substituted a bit of tea for it, so his lordship was in no danger. At night, when Mr. Hamilton took to his drink, Lord Hamilton and I were overhead, walking and talking until he recaptured his memory. Fortunately, he began to remember it all quite clearly, and in particular, the will.”
“We planned to confront him with his perfidy, hoping rather to surprise him with the sheriff. As it happens, Mr. Trevor Hamilton surprised us one night, walking into his lordship’s suite as we worked. When Mr. Hamilton saw his father walking and speaking, he understood that the opiate had not been administered. The viscount seized his opportunity, told him that he remembered everything quite clearly, and that the sheriff would arrive on the morrow. Mr. Hamilton took this news rather badly, I must say. He pleaded with his father to understand. He pleaded for a sum of five thousand pounds, saying that he was quite certain there were people looking for him now that would harm him if he couldn’t raise it. The viscount promised to consider it the following morning.”
“But with morning’s light, Mr. Trevor Hamilton was nowhere to be found. No note, nothing but a few articles of clothing gone missing, and a bit of cash, and some of his late wife’s jewelry Lord Hamilton had kept in the wall safe. The rest of the story, I think you know. The only issue, which remains unclear, is exactly how much he might have stolen from his father. The viscount has sent for his man from London to assess it.”
The conclusion of Darby’s speech was met with silence. The group exchanged glances with one another, all of them struggling to understand how a man could find himself in such desperate circumstance as to turn against his own father.
It was Caleb who finally broke the silence. He rose from his seat, came and knelt by Will’s side. “Thank God you are quite all right. I have worried so about your health these last months. It was plain to see, even from a distance, that you were not improving. It was not until Madame Fortier began to take her daily walks with you that I saw a measure of improvement. Sophie and I both agreed that you looked terribly robust in her company, but frail in your own home.”
Will cocked his head at that. He had been ill, and perhaps a bit slow, but he at least recognized it was unusual for his son to address a lady by her given name. “Sophie?” he asked, glancing at the pretty young woman on the settee.
“Actually, I should say Mrs. Hamilton,” Caleb clarified, and smiling proudly, extended his hand toward her. “We married yesterday.”
Will’s heart surged to the point of bursting. But … Caleb’s lack of legitimate name was more than anyone could hope to overcome—Will jerked his gaze to Julian Dane, one brow lifted. “You approve?”
The Earl of Kettering lifted his hands, and laughing, shook his head. “It was not my decision to make or approve, my lord; I assure you my sister has made that quite clear. But yes, whether she wants it or not, she has our blessing. Her happiness is paramount to any other issue, and I think you can see from her silly grin that she is quite happy.”
She rose from the settee, her eyes shining, and glided to where Will sat. “Happy? I think the word does not do justice to my feelings, my lord.”
“I know these words. My Sofia, she loves him very m
uch,” Honorine said, laughing.
Will’s eyes suddenly misted; he looked down at his gnarled hand, and remembered, with painful acuity, the many times he had cried for this son, had wished for him all the happiness he had so surely taken from him with the manner of his birth. It was more than he had ever dared hope for Caleb—to simply be accepted for the man he was. To be loved, to be honored, to be cherished for what was in his soul, and not to be spurned for his lack of name. To fly.
It was, he thought sadly, the perfect antidote to Trevor’s betrayal.
He looked up, saw the way his son looked at Lady Sophie, and smiled. He motioned her to him. “Come …”
Later that evening, when they sat around the long dining room table, Julian sat admiring his youngest sister. Anyone could see, looking at Sophie now, that she was a changed person. The happiness shining in her big brown eyes made her appear lovelier than he had ever remembered seeing her. She was vibrant, alive—drawing laughter from everyone as she cheerfully regaled them with stories of her travels with Madame Fortier. The stories were, naturally, punctuated with Honorine’s disavowal of strange places and even stranger events, much to their collective amusement, and particularly, that of Lord Hamilton. He, too, looked like a new man. And Caleb, well, good God, a man’s chest could positively burst with so much pride.
But as Julian sat beside Sophie now, he took her hand in his, leaned toward her, and whispered, “You are the luckiest of us all, you know.”
She laughed brightly at that, patted his knee. “Now I know you’ve had too much wine, Julian.”
He shook his head. “I am quite serious, pumpkin. Only you have the luxury to do as you please, you know that? The women in London, they are bound by society’s many expectations and rules. When I look at you, I see a woman freed of such earthly bonds, free to be who she pleases, free to love as openly and completely as she desires. For years, you felt imprisoned by your scandal, and I think, buried in your remorse. I so hoped that you would come to see your freedom. I prayed you would find happiness. I suppose I never thought it would be in England, but when I see you sitting here like you are, wearing a smile that could light the night sky, I realize, you are the luckiest among us all.”
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